


After the Battle

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Book 8: The Ionian Mission, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 13:31:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19702366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: In the aftermath of the action with the Turks of the Torgud and the Kitabi a badly wounded Tom Pullings clings to life and reflects on all that he has left to lose.





	After the Battle

**Author's Note:**

> A post Ionian Mission fic that got into my head a few weeks ago and absolutely wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it all down.

There is blood on the forechains.

Blood that drips with a sickening sluggishness through the salt stained slats of the orlop, puddling in a pool of blackened scarlet in a dark corner of the cabin.

As the cot swings and lurches against the swell and his head continues to throb, Tom is sure that the green wake that the _Surprise_ throws up behind her will be washing out scarlet with the blood of the Turks that had met their end in the stampede to get across from the _Kitabi._

Everything aches.

Every breath is torture as his lungs continue to push futilely against bent in bone, a faint whistle of air that tastes of blood catching through his teeth.

His upper body throbs with new bruises that push against old wounds and the nagging insistency of minor sabre slashes, but these are mere irritants and are swiftly replaced by a deeper, darker agony that he is scarcely able to name.

His face does not feel like it belongs to him, his eyes feeling too big for their sockets as he tries to keep them closed, tries to stop the jagged pinpricks of excruciating white light from blasting through the comfort of black oblivion.

His nose is nothing more than a blaze of pain, a closely knit ball of fire that is hurtling towards him from somewhere off the centre of his subconscious.

Above his head, the light is shifting, plunging into shadows, the distant reverberation of running feet and the snap of lines in a fine topgallant breeze pulses through his head as the weight of something hard and lined falls into his hand.

Fingers, his brain tells him after a moment of groping in the dark for the word.

Five of them, all calloused and dented from years of pens and scalpels, reaching for his wrist to take his pulse.

Giving him a lifeline.

A short, rough, Irish cough caught deep in the back of the throat and he holds on tighter as the hands slip away from his own.

_Don’t leave me!_

The thought is a spike of fire against his brain and he reaches further through the darkness, straining past the point of the pain, desperately trying to reach it again.

Slowly, he tries to open his eyes, gritting his teeth as the action sends yet more pain cascading across his broken face.

The world shifts slowly into focus, swimming into an intimitant flame that jumps and gutters from the lamp hung up by the door and the candle standing in a puddle of wax on a sea chest, a coil of rope hung in a hangman’s knot by the door.

Bonden’s face looms above his head, pale and strained beneath his bloody, smoke stained tan.

‘The doctor will patch you up nice and tidy, sir. Don’t you worry.’ His voice is unnaturally soft, the rough hand that grips his shoulder trembling ever so slightly. Though why Bonden would be in the orlop at the turning of the first dog watch is something that he can’t make out.

‘Aye, thankee Bonden. If you could send Padeen down for me, I’d be uncommon grateful…’ The doctor’s voice is thick with exhaustion, his short shadow thrown up somewhere behind Tom’s head, the bow of his ancient tie wig caught against the light that flickers against the ceiling.

Shadows of movement flicker against the corners of his shuttered vision and something cold and wet is laid against his forehead and another against the dense ball of fire that he thinks is his nose.

Something small and sharp flashes past the scrap of vision that is left to him, passing above his left eye and the world teeters wildly, a white hot ball of agony building as the needle passes in and out of his broken face, knitting back torn away skin, muscle and bone.

His breathing quickens, shards of agony sharp in his throat, a knot of sudden, unexplainable panic suddenly lodged in his throat, making it suddenly impossible to draw an easy breath.

He must have made an involuntary sound- a sob, a scream perhaps- because the next thing he knows is that strong arms are holding him, gripping his shoulders, easing him back into the confines of the cot with something hot, unwanted and metallic burning against his tongue and a stream of soft, unintelligible Irish rippling over his head.

For a moment, he hopes, foolishly, that they belong to Constance.

‘Easy there, Tom,’ he hears against the guttering flicker of the candle, the crash of feet above his head, the pounding of waves against the hull as a strip of worn leather is passed between his teeth.

‘You must lie still, d’you hear me? You’ve had a knock, a bad knock and…’

But he never knows what how bad the knock had been, because what is left of his reality is already slipping away with the dark fantasies of the fever to take its’ place and there is nothing that he can do about it.

* * *

‘How is he, Stephen?’

‘Mending, slowly. The fever is lessening, praise be, but Jack…’

The words are low and muffled in the silence and he has to strain through the darkness to make them out.

‘Jack, listen. The nerves around the stapedius muscle may be badly damaged and if that’s the case, then I- no- _Listen,_ Jack-’

The creak of the chair being pushed back and a black, vehement expletive that reverberates around the dark, close cabin.

‘I will not listen to you, Stephen! Not if… I cannot…. I _will not-‘_

Jack’s hand lands heavily on his shoulder and he feels the tremor of the knurled, weather-worn fingers as they dig painfully through the linen of his nightshirt, hear the choked hitch catching behind the strength of his captain’s voice in the silence.

Feels the ghost of tears prick against his own eyes, agonising heat burning in the darkness.

Tears for his captain, for Stephen, for himself, but most of all for Constance and Gilbert, who, far away in the leaf shaded security of their cottage in the grounds of Braemor Manor do not know of his misfortune.

A strangled sob catches in his throat at the thought of her, sitting in her father’s chair by the parlour fire with the oak beams swarming up around her head, Gilbert banging into the cottage, his youthful face all ruddy and golden from a day spent out in the sun helping to bring in the harvest.

The beat of dreadful silence drags on, broken only by Jack’s deep, wretched breathing, as the light that filters through the cracks in Tom’s vision shifts and changes pulling him further and further into a reality that could almost be a dream.

* * *

When he next comes round, it feels as if he has been pulled up from some dark wreckage and left gasping on the boards of the deck to dry out.

The doctor and his captain are asleep, the incremental light from the quarter deck casting their bowed heads into bursts of light and shadow.

He clings to the sight of them, to the reassuring swing of the cot as it sways in time to the creak and groan of the ship. His head feels too heavy for his neck to bear its’ weight, his face throbbing with a yet unknown agony.

From some distant part of the ship, he hears six bells of the morning watch being struck, every inch of his body suddenly aching to be up. To be out and able to stretch his thick and aching limbs on the quarter deck with the freshness of a topgallant breeze brushing away the cobwebs of illness and injury.

As his vision clears, he sees Jack stir, his face twitching at the end of a dream, tendrils of yellow hair catching the light as it falls across the broad, rugged face that he respects with all his heart. Hears a short, hammering knock of a fist at the door that falls away as soon as it had begun and the doctor murmur something unintelligible in Irish.

‘Doctor?’

His voice is an agonised rasp in the back of his throat, his tongue as dry and heavy as sandpaper as he tries to swallow, the thin metallic tang of laudanum that lingers there making him want to gag.

Slowly, he makes an attempt at shifting against the cot, but has to bite back a cry as a wave of pain erupts from an unseen, unfelt wound in his leg.

‘Tom?’

Maturin’s face is worn and haggard in the half light, his wide eyes seeming ever wider with the lack of his physicians wig, visibly brightening at the sight of his patient. Slowly, he creeps across to the cot and rests a cold, bony hand against Tom’s forehead, looking closely into his face as he does so.

‘The fever seems to be past its’ worst,’ he murmurs, as he feels for a pulse, passing over a horn mug of water as he does so. It is lukewarm and gritty, but after the desperate heat of the fever, it feels like all the ambrosia of Olympus have been mixed into a single cup.

The doctor considers Tom for a long silent moment before continuing, eyes dark behind his spectacles. ‘You are in your rights wits, praise be. That is something to be thankful for, at the very least.’

‘Was it… Was it very bad?’

Even as he says it, the question sounds foolish, childish even, but the doctor nods, slowly helping him into a sitting position.

‘There was none that would comfort you- not even the captain or Mowett, which, I’m sorry to say, distressed them both. But you are- Well, I will let you see how you are.’ An old, sad look passes across the doctor’s face as he says this, one, with a shock, in which Tom sees himself as he had been when he had first met the doctor and Jack aboard the _Sophie_ as a tall, leggy master’s mate, clinging onto the fragile hope of being passed as a lieutenant that had grown slimmer with every passing year.

A dull ache rises through his heart at the mention of his oldest and closest friends’ name, one that has nothing to do with the pain- or perhaps it has everything to do with it and at that moment, he realises that the thought of Mowett sitting on an up upturned bucket as he thrashed through the fever, is too much to bear.

Tom watches Maturin rise slowly from the cot and creep across the sick bay towards a sea chest that acted as a countertop, pulling up a drawer that squeaked at the hinges and finding a looking glass.

His face is set and grave when he turns back to Tom, and begins to unwind the bandages, with a deliberately methodical air, an expression torn between love and worry sharpening his features.

‘I hope you don’t hate me when you see it. I did the best I could.’

* * *

He does not know how long he clings to the glass before it finally slips into his lap and he lets the first tears fall.

Does not know how long it is before his shoulders stop heaving. His throat is caught in a hot, dry ache that leaves him gasping and grateful even for the beaker of coarse water that the doctor has left him.

Overhead, the light shifts into the long, sharp shadows of evening and it as five bells of the last dog watch is called, that he hears Jack’s familiar, heavy tread on the ladder.

‘How are you, Tom?’

Jack’s eyes are soft with worry as they take in the heavily bandaged face before him, his voice a low, deep rumble that is almost Tom’s undoing.

‘I…’

The word is thick in his throat, his tongue hot and useless against the roof of his mouth.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he tries to take a breath.

‘I- The doctor fears that the scarring will be permanent, but I- I hope that-‘

He can’t continue.

Can’t put into coherent words what is on his heart, even to his captain, to the man whom he would follow into the jaws of Hell if he were asked.

‘I know,’ Jack replies quietly, moving closer to rest a worn, calloused hand on Tom’s shoulder, his presence saying more than any words of comfort ever can. ‘I know.’

* * *

_**Fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! 
> 
> Comments, suggestions, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain. 
> 
> Much love,
> 
> Phoenixflames12 xxx


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